


Finding Frances Carfax

by tepidspongebath



Series: Seduction [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Humor, Korean spas in particular, M/M, Spas, Undressing, public nudity in places where it is appropriate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-17
Updated: 2013-12-17
Packaged: 2018-01-04 23:13:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1086808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tepidspongebath/pseuds/tepidspongebath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With several hours to kill before their flight back to London, Sherlock Holmes knows precisely what to do while they wait, and John Watson finds himself introduced to a Korean spa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finding Frances Carfax

To begin with, Sherlock Holmes was not dead. Quite the opposite of the proverbial doornail.

Because he was not, in fact, deceased, he was a lot of other things in the present tense. _Consulting detective_ still applied, of course – there’d be no changing that, not for a very long time. And to that John Watson would readily add _brilliant_ and _amazing_ and _devastatingly clever_. Those were the easy ones. _Remarkable_ followed quickly enough. _Incandescent_ was applicable too, though it was less obvious and more poetic, which Sherlock would sneer at. _Forceful_ could be considered a positive attribute, unless, depending on how it was applied, it tipped over into _overbearing._ Still, John would concede that Sherlock was _a force for the public good_ (because it was largely true, once you got around the fact that most members of the public wanted to punch him in the face once they actually met him), as long as he could also call him _mad, insufferable,_ and _too bloody clever for his own good_.

Currently, Sherlock Holmes was also briskly and efficiently stripping off his clothes.

It wasn’t anything John hadn’t seen before (being no stranger to the male body, or the male body in locker rooms, or even Sherlock’s male body in particular) and it actually wasn’t that hard to look away (the man was going through the singularly un-arresting motions of shaking a trouser leg off his ankle). The tricky part, thought John as he tugged at the hem of his jumper, was finding somewhere safe to look. Almost everyone else in the room was engaged in the same activity or the opposite, though somehow similarly intimate, act of putting their clothes back on.

It was giving him the screaming willies.

This wasn’t what John had in mind when Sherlock said he knew exactly what to do while they waited for their flight back to London. He had been all for checking into a hotel for a few hours, or, failing a nice sleep in a proper bed, he wouldn’t have said no to a kip in the airport lounge. But, no, Sherlock _would_ drag him to a bloody _spa_. A bloody spa in _South Korea_ where, apparently, you stripped to the skin and walked around starkers until you had a bath that you shared with what looked like several hundred other naked men.  That he was the only one who seemed to mind just made John feel like even more of a chump.

“You could have warned me, you know,” he said. Talking helped a bit. Talking was a distraction. It was better than pretending to be endlessly fascinated by the ceiling.

“I didn’t think you’d mind. We’ve been to spas before.” That was true. For someone who dismissed most of his bodily functions as mere transport, Sherlock was rather keen on establishments that specialized in pampering the said body-which-was-for-transport, and he’d taken John along to several of them. (John usually enjoyed himself up to the point when heavy hints about couples’ massages were thrown their way.)

“Not this kind. Not where they didn’t have towels big enough to wrap around your waist.” To be fair they _had_ been given towels. And the towels were white and clean and fluffy, and might have lent decency to a hand puppet. Upon further consideration, John decided that they also might have done nicely for a rabbit who wanted to hitchhike its way across the galaxy, but they were still woefully inadequate as far as providing crotch-cover for ex-army doctors went. The narrow wooden lockers didn’t help either: the doors were nowhere near wide enough to hide behind.  John looked at his watch. “I could just wait outside.”

“On the benches they have in the lobby for at least six hours? I don’t think so. You’ll be even more cross at the end of it.”

“Or I could head on to the airport.”

“You’ve come this far, John. You won’t die of culture shock.”

“Oh, stop it. You’re one to talk about culture shock.” John took advantage of his rising pique and pulled off his jumper. It wasn’t usually him who acted the part of an out-of-sorts toddler, but he couldn’t help feeling that the world would be so much better after he’d had a nap. Or a large bag of sweets. He went on, words muffled by the wool as he pulled it over his head, “ _You’re_ not the one who spent all of last week bouncing around Southeast Asia looking for a girl who looks like almost every other local there. And I _know_ her father’s as English as the pigeons that crap on Lord Nelson, but you’d be surprised at how little difference that makes.

“And all those languages – I’ve been abroad before, but I’ve always had time to at least _look_ at a phrase book before I went. I was walking around with cards with different versions of ‘Have you seen this girl?’ on them, and still I had a job explaining that I didn’t have a craving, I was looking for a specific one. And even then,” he added, jabbing a hanger into his jumper with more violence than was strictly necessary, “ _even then_ , once they figured that I wasn’t looking for girls, quite a lot of the time they assumed I was looking for _boys_ instead.”

“I caught up with you in Thailand,” said Sherlock smoothly, turning to look at John. He still had his shirt on, even if half the buttons were undone, and, now that he had straightened up, it was covering all the significant bits.   

“Yeah, you did. Pretending to be a bloody Frenchman.” John shook his head and started reluctantly to pluck at his own buttons. Sherlock had shown up in time to stop one of the missing girl’s old boyfriends from doing permanent damage to John’s face, after John had asked some pretty sharp questions about the girl’s whereabouts. He’d given John hell for bungling the investigation because _clearly_ the man hadn’t been involved in the disappearance of Frances Carfax, any _idiot_ could see that. Well, all right, maybe it had been a little mild to count as having been given hell, but Sherlock had been infernally and witheringly superior over the matter all the same. “It wasn’t what I had in mind when you offered me the free trip to Asia.”

“You knew it was for a case.”

“Yes. I knew. You made a point of telling me before you packed me in the cab to Heathrow. Though from what I remember what you said boiled down to, ‘Fancy a trip to Asia, John? Here, have some free tickets. Oh, and while you’re there, you’ll have to find Frances Carfax – it’ll be like playing _Where’s Waldo_ , only she won’t have the striped jumper.’”

That made Sherlock laugh. It was one of the best things about Sherlock _not_ being dead, that laugh, and John half—naked in a public place in a foreign country at the end of a very long week, found himself joining in, just because he could.

“I’m just completely knackered,” he said, when they were done, and he was trying to make his clothes fit in a locker that was mostly filled with an overlarge backpack. “I don’t know how you manage to stay up, and you live on air and coffee.” He sighed and started to undo his belt, doing his best to look past Sherlock _and_ the other man undressing several lockers down. “And I know it’s all just anatomy. I’m just not used to this much anatomy walking around all at once.”

The corner of Sherlock’s mouth quirked upwards in a sort of half smile. “It is different when it’s not on a slab, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Doesn’t help that you’re looking.”

Sherlock raised his eyebrow in an affronted _No I’m not_ and began to make a show of arranging his own considerably smaller case in his locker. Somewhere in the depths of it, his phone began to ring. John didn’t ask what that was about, being vaguely sure that he’d eventually find out anyway, and was considerably surprised when the consulting detective did _not_ answer his mobile, electing to ignore the ringing and give his bag a vicious shake as if that would shut it up.

“You’re not going to get that?”

“No.”

“It could be about the case.”

“The Carfax girl? I doubt it. We’ve exhausted all the leads here, even if you did bungle the bit about the vacationing missionary and his wife, and everything says she made it safely back to the UK.”

John ignored that. Anyone could have seen that that Australian couple had been up to no good; it wasn’t his fault that they’d been up to nothing more sinister in this country other than cheating at poker. “Don’t you have anything else on?” he asked, and immediately regretted his choice of words as Sherlock slipped off his shirt so that he had nothing on at all. The man had no shame. He tried to keep his eyes on Sherlock’s left ear. “I mean, wasn’t that why you sent me looking for her? Because you had other things to see to?”

“Nothing that would require a transcontinental phone call.”

“It might be important. Seeing it is, as you say, a transcontinental phone call.”

Again that half-smile. “Still quaint. Very charming, really it is, but it can wait till we get back.” Sherlock shut the locker with decisive click, snapped the key on its elastic band around his wrist.

“You’re not even going to look?”

“If it’s really important, they’ll call again. Come along, John, we don’t have much time. Off with your pants.”

**Author's Note:**

> I've been sitting on this for about a year. It's the first chapter of what was supposed to be the sequel to _The Seduction of John S. Willoughby_ , though I think I will leave it as a oneshot for now. I wasn't going to share this anymore, because I had too many doubts about this story and my ability to write it (all I will say in my defense is that _The Illustrious Client_ starts with Holmes wrapped in a sheet in a spa, and my own visit to that spa in Busan might qualify as a life-changing experience in a small way), but that fanfic debacle at the Sherlock Q &A hit us all where we live, and I hate the way fic was used to shame fans and fanwork creators - in particular a writer who I admire and like very much - at an event that was supposed to be, well, glorious. And I hate that there are people who might consider giving up fic because of that incident. 
> 
> [Other people have argued more eloquently about how and why fic matters](http://mojoflower.tumblr.com/post/70286350024/down-with-this-sort-of-thing-or-why-the-fanfiction) and what it means and how it's important for all of us who consume it, and [why it was massively wrong for it to be taken and twisted like that](http://www.dailydot.com/news/sherlock-fanfic-caitlin-moran/). As for my two cents, I've already told you [how much writing _Seduction_ meant to me](http://archiveofourown.org/works/509470/chapters/1060444). This fic in particular is what I happened to have on hand (after my computer died a sudden and unexpected death, taking what I wanted to post with it, but that is beside the point), and I suppose I am posting it in protest of what was done and in support of everybody who writes and creates fanwork.
> 
> So have this fic. Have all sorts of fic. _Write_ all sorts of fic. There is no shame in it.


End file.
